Peter Nichols obituary
My friend and former sports-writing colleague at the Observer Peter Nichols, who has died from Parkinson’s-related dementia aged 79, was a man of many talents: drama teacher, Time Out cabaret correspondent, athletics correspondent, London Marathon international race organiser, publisher and award-winning radio scriptwriter.Pete was a sporting Google long before Google was invented.He was a sharer, the go-to source at the seven Olympiads he covered.“Pete was utterly invaluable,” recalls the former Guardian head of sport Ben Clissitt.“His input was the Guardian playbook for our Olympic coverage.
”His smiling, twinkle-eyed persona was a presence in press rooms round the world.He was a charming contrarian, rarely accepting received wisdom, fighting his corner, as the local council in his home town, Brighton, once discovered when Pete accumulated several hundred parking tickets and eventually won his case to have them cancelled because of misleading signage.Witty, pedantic, generous, argumentative, he took Robert Frost’s “road less travelled” as his preferred pathway, be it a pub off the beaten track or the trumpeting of a minor sport.He was a man of broad tastes, at ease discussing Emil Zátopek or Emile Zola.Peter was born in London, in Homerton, Hackney, the son of Albert, a surgical salesman, and Agnes (nee Kuch), a secretary.
Educated at Harrow county school, Pete spent time in Australia before returning to study English and American studies (1974-77) at the University of East Anglia as a mature student.He went on to take up a drama teaching post in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, following a Cert Ed course at Goldsmiths College.There was a writing itch that needed to be addressed, though, and Pete was soon covering the comedy circuit for Time Out, and gave Paul Merton one of his first reviews.Athletics was his great love, and Pete came to national attention when he worked with Pat Butcher, a UEA pal who became the Times athletics correspondent, on a groundbreaking exposé of drugs in sport in the Times in 1987.Cheats never slept easy when that pair were on the job.
Pete’s inquisitive mind saw him generate an eclectic output,He spent his later years working alongside his wife, Karen Rose, at her award-winning radio production company, Sweet Talk Productions,His play Esterhazy, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2006, was a highly commended runner-up for the Richard Imison award the following year,Pete and Karen first met in London in 1985, and they married in 2016,Peter is survived by Karen and his son, Will, as well as by his older sister, Judy.
Ofgem approves early investment in three UK electricity ‘superhighways’
Three major UK electricity “superhighways” could move ahead sooner than expected to help limit the amount that households pay for windfarms to turn off during periods of high power generation.Current grid bottlenecks mean there is not enough capacity to transport the abundance of electricity generated in periods of strong winds to areas where energy demand is highest.The new high-voltage cable projects linking windfarms in Scotland and off the North Sea coast to densely populated areas in the south of the country could start operations by the early 2030s rather than towards the end of the decade, according to the sector regulator.This should help to cut the rising cost of paying windfarms to turn off when they generate more electricity than the grid can transport. Without better interconnection these payments, which consumers cover via their energy bills, are expected to reach more than £12bn a year by the end of the decade
BoE predicts budget measures will lower inflation, and denies uncertainty caused unusual bond market volatility – as it happened
Senior members of the Bank of England are appearing before the Treasury committee now.MPs will hear from deputy governors Clare Lombardelli and Sir Dave Ramsden, as well as two external members of the Monetary Policy Committee – Swati Dhingra and Catherine Mann.The quartet are without governor Andrew Bailey, who isn’t available due to “an unavoidable international commitment”.They will discuss the Bank’s decision to maintain interest rates at 4% in November, and also its latest Monetary Policy Report.Time to recap
EU opens investigation into Google’s use of online content for AI models
The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence.The European Commission said on Tuesday it would examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, was putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage”.The commission said: “The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage.”It said it was concerned that Google may have used content from web publishers to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.The commission said it was also concerned as to whether Google had used content uploaded to YouTube to train its own generative AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility to refuse
Australia launches a social media ban – and is AI a bubble about to pop?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you from a New York City that feels much colder than last December. 🥶In a world first, Australia implemented a ban on social media use for people under 16. It’s the first country to take such a far-reaching measure. Starting on 10 December, children and teens under 16 will not be allowed to use social media in Australia
England’s Ashes approach is scrambling the brains of the next cricketing generation | Mark Ramprakash
The cracks are starting to show with this England team and with the narrative we’ve been fed for three years after another defeat. Their identity of always taking the aggressive option, of relentlessly putting pressure on their opponents, isn’t holding up to scrutiny. So far in this series they haven’t had the strength needed to achieve it, and they haven’t had the skills either.I was confident that they could win the Ashes this time, mainly because I thought there was quality in the squad and that they had adapted their game to add intelligence and adaptability to their armoury. It’s becoming clear that neither of those beliefs were completely true
Claressa Shields to open $8m deal with Detroit rematch against Crews-Dezurn
Claressa Shields will defend her undisputed heavyweight championship in Detroit on 22 February, returning home for a rematch with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in her first fight since signing a landmark $8m promotional deal. The bout will headline a Dazn card at Little Caesars Arena, the home of the NBA’s Pistons and NHL’s Red Wings where Shields attracted a near-sellout crowd for her most recent fight last July.Shields (17-0, 3 KO) and Crews-Dezurn (10-2, 2 KO) first met nearly a decade ago when they made their professional debuts against each other on the undercard of Andre Ward’s victory over Sergey Kovalev in 2016. Shields won a four-round unanimous decision that night in Las Vegas, a moment she still sees as formative. “I had just come off winning two Olympic gold medals, fresh out of the amateurs, and finding an opponent was tough,” she said in a press release announcing the fight
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Helen Goh’s recipe for edible Christmas baubles | The sweet spot
A gentle trade in edible gifts binds communities together